The Tour

The first step was check-in and registration.  I had already reserved a driving time, but arrived a little early, so when I checked in they just put in me in an earlier group.  The groups are broken down to roughly 15-20 people, and it starts with a guided 10 minute introduction to the vehicle.

Even though I’m totally up to speed on the Leaf, I thought this was still an excellent introduction to have.  Everything our guide mentioned was exactly how I would have described things – using consumer-friendly language, real-world examples, and a touch of technical chatter.  It was really well done and it gets people who aren’t very familiar with the Leaf comfortable with what’s going on.  The most important thing is that Nissan has done a great job of training everyone on what to say and how to say it.  It’s subtle but crucial to have a focused, consumer-friendly message when you’re pushing a brand new type of car.

The Drive

After the brief tour, you line up to get into one of the 15 or so Leafs they have charged up and ready to go.  Again, everyone was very friendly – introducing themselves by name, shaking hands, etc.  These are not paid-by-the-hour zombies.  Everyone who worked at the Leaf tour was clearly enthusiastic about their work.  The experience was reminiscent to how Apple employees enthusiastically handle customers at their retail outlets.

I was first in line and I was introduced to my Nissan guide.  My wife and I randomly met some Austrians who were visiting Chicago and asked if they could ride along with us, which I was happy to let them do.  So we packed 5 adults into the white Leaf and got started.

My first impression of the Leaf’s interior is that it’s quite comfortable – soft to the touch, quiet, and cushy.  The guide took about a minute to get me acclimated to the instrument panel.  I noticed the instrument panel has a matte-style screen instead of a glossy glass screen.  This was something I didn’t previously notice, but it’s a smart touch to help with the display’s readability in bright sunlight.

The drive itself was phenomenal – I honestly felt like I was in the future.  To say that it was quiet seems like an understatement – I’ve ridden in $70,000 luxury cars that have the best NVH (noise, vibration, harshness) systems in the world, an it wasn’t even close.  To be fair, I never got above 40 MPH given the streets we were driving on, but it was insanely quiet.

On the straights I gave it about half to three-quarters on the pedal (never to the floor) and the Leaf’s acceleration is impressive.  I’ve driven a wide variety of cars – Murano, Prius, Miata, 350Z, TSX, Civic, SLK, MX-6, Grand National – and the Leaf’s acceleration just feels so different because of how smooth and linear it is.  There are no blips from shifting gears and no need to keep the car at an ideal RPM range since 100% torque is always available.  Honestly, it pulls so hard I could even detect a slight understeer.  That is to be expected from a front wheel drive car, but it’s got so much juice (excuse the pun) that I don’t doubt you could squeal the tires on it easily.

The guide also wanted to show me eco-mode, which puts the cars into a sort of “sleepy” mode where power is reduced to save energy.  As I was driving she put it into eco-mode and you could immediately tell the car became sluggish.  I doubt that I would ever use this because I know how to ease the throttle and conserve/generate energy.  But for my wife and other non hypermilers, this is a great feature.  Since she is not a “skilled” eco-driver (nor should you have to be one), a system that limits her lead foot and keeps her in check is going to be pretty useful.  When the guide turned eco-mode off, I immediately felt the engine spring back to life.

The steering on the Leaf is extremely light.  By design the Leaf has no power steering, but it’s the lightest steering I’ve ever felt.  It takes almost no effort to move the wheel – I bet you could do it with one finger if you wanted to.  As a result, you don’t exactly feel super connected to the road, but then again it’s not like you’re going take this onto a slalom course.  I wasn’t disappointed by this by any means – a light steering feel makes driving easy.  An average driver doesn’t care about steering feel, they want a nice drive, and a light feel accomplishes that.  Also, the car feels rock solid and stable – a light steering feel doesn’t equate to instability.

Walk Around

After the drive you have a chance to inspect a non-driving Leaf, with all of its doors, trunk, and hood opened up.  For sure the Leaf’s design is subjective, but I love it.  Rounded but sculpted.  Some aggressive front lights to offset some of its smiley face.  A big rotund back with the cool vertical tail lights.  And no tailpipe.

The trunk is large.  Because there’s no gas tank, that space is reclaimed for the trunk.  So there is a deep cutout into the trunk that gives you a bunch more vertical trunk space.  That’s needed because horizontally you’re going to run into the battery pack.  We saw a family put a double stroller in the Leaf no problem, and they mentioned they could easily put a few more bags in there.

The interior is cushy and comfortable.  Soft materials with generally high quality plastics.  There are a few spots where the plastic is step down, which I mostly noticed on the arm rests on the doors.  The interior is an off white color, which is maybe the single gripe that I have – it’s going to get dirty instantly, especially with a dog and kids.  Hopefully it’s like stain resistant carpet and cleans off with a wet rag for the most part.

Summary

I knew what to expect from the Leaf going in, and the experience only solidified my decision and has me anticipating November even more.  For my wife, it gave her a chance to be hands on with the car, and now she has a level of excitement she didn’t have before.

The Drive Electric campaign is clearly well organized.  The staff is knowledgable and friendly, and they’ve got the message down.  It was fun to be around like-minded people and chatting about the Leaf.  The only down note you’d hear is “when can I get one?”, with the resulting answer for most people being “next year”.

Very simply, the Nissan Leaf is ready for primetime on the streets of Chicago.

In Illinois, one rebate in particular stands out – the Electric Vehicle Purchase Rebate.  My understanding is that you’ll get the equivalent of $4,000 cash back from Illinois.  You have to apply for the rebate and read all the fine print, but that’s what it amounts to.  And this has nothing to do with taxes, either in credit or deductions.  This is a pure rebate, which means that regardless of your tax situation, you get the money back from Illinois.

Every program typically has a sunset date and is subject to change based on how vehicles are selling, but as of right now, looks like you can knock off another $4,000 from your Leaf in Illinois.  If you’re not in Illinois, Nissan has consolidated whatever financial incentive information onto their site as well.

I’ve read a lot of articles about where the Leaf falls short with the battery and its range, and it’s clear this video is taking direct aim at such articles.  The strategy is to frame the discussion around real world, daily life scenarios – what the Leaf was made for – rather than the extremes that the negative press seems to focus on.

Points of interest that Nissan addresses in the video:

* Life of the battery – good for 10 years, and a useful battery life of at least 80% after 5 years

* Chances are that you will never replace the entire battery pack, short of an accident.  Instead, you may replace modules within the pack – hundreds of dollars vs. thousands.  Think of it like an typical gas engine – if your engine breaks down, you’re going to replace a part, not the entire engine

* Charging infrastructure and electric vehicles are a classic chicken-egg scenario.  Infrastructure should follow now that the cars are out

* If you use a 440v fast charger every day, that means you’re likely doing 200 miles a day because you are expending the battery one way.  This translates to 72,000 miles of driving for one year, which is obviously well outside normal driving patterns

* People tend to drive during the day and charge during the night.  Often, they are working their charging schedules around electricity pricing

* Electric vehicles have been historically expensive, and Nissan’s business model is based on scale – getting tons of Leaf’s out there

I still use Spotlight as an app launcher (which I admit is pretty silly), so this means launching apps thorough the keyboard is dead to me until the indexing finishes every time, which isn’t a speedy process.

It’s probably time for me to run some cleanup scripts via Onyx.  And it’s definitely time for me to get reacquainted with Launchbar.

Update

I did a few things that have seemed to help stabilize Spotlight – you can try these steps, but your mileage may vary.

1. I ran all the Onyx automation tasks with every option turned on.  Basically, this cleans out anything your Mac caches.  This may be inconvenient – your Finder view settings, recently opened docs, etc. all get wiped out.  The good news is that this will delete any Spotlight caches as well.  Onyx can take a while to run (mine went almost 2 hours), so don’t start this in the middle of the day.  And it goes without saying, but always do a full backup before running any system tools like Onyx.
2. I use Spotlight less.  This is of course silly, but Launchbar as an app launcher is much better anyway.

Bottom line is that if you crash while Spotlight is indexing, it will definitely reindex when you reboot (as it should).  For me, using Spotlight to search was crashing, and that also resulted in reindexing at reboot.

If a person doesn’t feel like they need something, isn’t filling an entire room in their house with that item going to aggravate them more?  This doesn’t just apply to computers, it could be anything.  Let’s say the product was books instead.  I personally dislike books – they take up tons of space, are rarely used more than once, and are environmentally unsound.  If I were the target of an ad campaign and I walked into my house completely filled with a bunch of books, I would be less than thrilled.  How does this get a product on someone’s good side?  You’re trying to sell me something that I’ve already said I don’t want.

A case could be made that great marketing and salesmanship can convince someone to buy.  But these ads barely have time to showcase any standout products – you only see that you have a lot to choose from (I count 21 computers in the commercial).  Shortage in choice was never the PC market’s problem.  Any consumer who walks into a Best Buy knows the confusion that sets in because of all the computers to choose from.  All this ad shows is that you still have to do a lot of thinking and look at dozens of models before you buy.

I guess surprising (or annoying) someone by building a Windows store in their house is supposed to be seen as clever marketing, but really it just comes off as pointless.  What you’re left with is a gimmick of Microsoft building a store in someone’s house full of products they don’t want.

If you’re in the Chicago area, two great options are PAWS in Chicago (map) and Kay’s Animal Shelter in Arlington Heights (map).  We got our pup Parker from Kay’s and as many pet parents believe, we’re pretty sure she’s the best dog in the world.

Unfortunately, when you get to the site, this is all you see.

It lays out nicely, but all it ends up being is an advertisement for the $1.99 app.  I didn’t download it myself, but reviews are pretty poor, with most of the gripes being that the video content isn’t available.  Not only are full episodes unavailable (which I wouldn’t expect anyway), but apparently extended interviews aren’t available either.

In other words, keep your laptop handy if you want to see anything meaningful from The Daily Show online.

I’ve come to realize that a pivotal portion of my family’s history will be remembered not as a span of years but as an era in which we shared our lives with a rusty-orange and white hound named Daisy.

It’s a tearjerking article that will have you looking for your pup to give her a hug.  It helps a little to know that Daisy (or any pup you’ve raised) has had a life well-lived, full of fond memories for both owner and dog.

Now go spend some time with your pooch.

via Pets mark the chapters of our lives – chicagotribune.com.

In my completely unscientific tests, using the Bluetooth remote made the TiVo perform at least twice as fast in normal navigation tasks – going through the guide, navigating the list of recorded shows, typing/searching, etc.  For some reason the normal IR remote has a noticeable lag between button presses, which makes the UI seem much slower than it actually is.  That split second lag multiplied by dozens of button presses per TV-watching session eventually translates to perceived slowness.

But with the Bluetooth remote, navigation happens near instantly.  If there’s any lag, it’s mostly imperceptible.  If anything, once in a while the TiVo needs to catch up to what it’s being asked to do.  It’s an absolutely massive improvement in perceived performance of the device.

Hardware wise, the plastic, “clickier” buttons are much nicer to use than the mushy rubber ones on the standard remote.  And if you search or type a lot on your TiVo, you’ll love the slide out keyboard  - it’s a joy to use.

TiVo just dumped the price of the remote (maybe a new one soon?), and it’s going for a mere $47 on Amazon.  And although TiVo ought to make this the standard issue remote, if you’ve got a TiVo HD or better and use your TiVo a lot, this is a worthy upgrade.